Even in murder, class matters
Berjis Desai
One was dashing and handsome; the other a shifty eyed psychopath. One killed for honor and passion; the other for greed. One confessed but was hero worshipped; the other denied guilt but was despised. One was pardoned, lived a free man in a comfortable bed, the other, hung from the neck until he died. Both were convicted and both were Parsis.
Commander Kawas Nanavati, a highly decorated officer of the Indian Navy, having served as an attaché to defence minister V. K. Krishna Menon in Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet, was well liked even by Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Tall and good looking, Nanavati looked like the hero who had stepped out of a Mills and Boon novel. He married an English beauty, Sylvia, and they had three children. This picture perfect tableau was soon to be shattered.
Phiroze Daruwala was also tall, not bad looking and bespectacled. A divorcee, he remarried Marie, a comely Roman Catholic telephone operator, whose adoptive parents had a small cottage in Bandra. They had a tiny daughter whom Daruwala adored. After passing Senior Cambridge, the future murderer was a conman who lived by his wits. A hardcore gambler, he frequented ‘social clubs’ to play rummy and poker, and at night, he eagerly awaited the Matka number (a digit released daily by a then don called Ratan Khatri, literally from an earthen pot or matka). He had strong and wiry hands, which he would later use to snuff out many lives.
Phiroze Daruwala (l) and Commander Kawas Nanavati;
Photos: Courtesy Deepak Rao from the book Mumbai Police
During Nanavati’s frequent trips abroad, a bored Sylvia was seduced by a family friend, a Sindhi playboy called Prem Ahuja, who promised to marry her. When Prem reneged on his promise, an enraged Sylvia confided in her husband. Nanavati froze in silence at this double betrayal. He dropped Sylvia and the kids to Metro cinema to watch a cartoon film; went to Naval Headquarters, got a revolver, and went to Ahuja’s house. A smiling Ahuja stepped out of his bath, draped only in a towel, to meet his friend from the Navy. "I don’t marry every woman I sleep with,” were Ahuja’s last famous words; as Nanavati shot him through his heart twice, point blank. The assignment completed with the clinical precision of a disciplined serviceman, Nanavati surrendered himself at the Colaba Police station.
Daruwala pretended to see a ghost in his in-laws’ cottage and started to sleep in his old father-in-law’s room. A few days later, the old man never woke up. Daruwala told his wife and mother-in-law (whom he also later unsuccessfully tried to poison) that burial was bad for the soul and got the gentleman cremated to leave no evidence of suffocation by a pillow. Within days, he sold the cottage for Rs 68,000 and shifted his family to a shady hotel at Marine Lines. Marie told the police later that her husband had also hatched a plan to abduct the Matka don and make him declare the desired digit at night, to make a fortune. He also tried to kill a Gujarati money lender with a heavy stone but the latter somehow survived. Desperate to repay his mounting gambling debts, Daruwala dabbled in the bullion trade and lost heavily in a single day. His desperation was reaching its peak.
When Nanavati’s trial by jury began in the Bombay Sessions Court, the courtroom was packed with swooning ladies, enraged Parsis who insisted Nanavati could not be tried for this ‘honor killing,’ and angry Sindhis, amongst whom Ahuja was a likeable fellow. Grave provocation, not premeditated, argued the defence led by Karl Khandalawala. But Ahuja’s famous towel was intact on his bloodied body and therefore Nanavati’s version of a scuffle with Ahuja and the shots being fired accidently should be disbelieved, said Ram Jethmalani for the prosecution. The jury returned a verdict, by 8:1, of guilty. Ahuja was guilty, Nanavati was "innocent” and not guilty. The veteran Sessions Judge Ratilal Bhaichand Mehta termed the jury’s decision "perverse” and referred the matter to the High Court, which convicted Nanavati of premeditated murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction.
Nanavati murder coverage in Blitz
Nusserwanji, also a small time conman in his youth, resided in Jehangir Mansion, a dilapidated and dark building with a gloomy staircase, at Dhobitalao, inhabited mostly by Parsis. Nusserwanji’s wife, Gaimai, then in her seventies, was once upon a time, a ravishing beauty of Dhobitalao. Nusserwanji and Gaimai were maintained by the latter’s lover, a bachelor called Dorabsha, who stayed with them and who worked as a court clerk in Crawford Bayley & Company, a law firm of antiquity (this columnist recalls, during his stint with this law firm, oldtimers taking about Dorabsha’s salacious conversations with Gaimai over the phone). The three old Parsis were served by their faithful domestic, Bawla, who spoke fluent Parsi Gujarati.
The Nanavati affair took a distinct communal turn. The Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) supported Nanavati. The governor of Maharashtra issued an unprecedented decree placing Nanavati into naval custody, pending his appeal to the Supreme Court. This enraged the Sindhi community. The Parsis held a public meeting at Cowasji Jehangir Hall to support the governor. Around 3,500 Parsis packed the hall and nearly 5,000 stood outside the hall. Blitz, a tabloid owned and edited by Rusi Karanjia, was Nanavati’s greatest supporter. Those days, a copy of Blitz, priced at 25 paise, sold like hot cakes, for two rupees.
Nanavati spent a little more than three years in prison before he was pardoned by Vijayalaxmi Pandit, Nehru’s sister and governor of Maharashtra, along with a Sindhi convict called Bhai Pratap, to allay the growing tension between the two communities. Jury trial was abolished in India following Nanavati’s fiasco (and survives as a remnant only in the Parsi Matrimonial Court). Nanavati’s pardon raised a huge outcry but, in the early 60s, there was no aggressive social media or television, and the Nehrus could do no wrong. In any event, the popular view was overwhelmingly in favor of Nanavati who had already undergone the ignominy of three years in jail with other murderers, thieves, pimps and conmen. After his release, stripped of his naval honors, Nanavati migrated to Canada, Sylvia et al, and kept a very low profile, till his death in 2003 in a Toronto suburb. A moment of great anger had destroyed a fairy tale existence. The only consolation was that, in the eyes of the public, he was a hero avenging his honor.
On February 2, 1971 afternoon, Daruwala placed a gupti (a small sword-like knife) on Gaimai’s throat and demanded money. The old lady foolishly offered Rs 60, which enraged Daruwala to slit her throat, and then he continued to stab her, even though she was long dead. Her husband suffered the same fate, and so did poor Bawla, who rolled in sheer agony under the sofa. Enter Dorabsha, during his lunch break from Crawford Bayley. Slumping in an easy chair his Parsi white dugla turned crimson red from Daruwala’s stabs. Totally, the assailant stabbed 147 times. Daruwala left no fingerprints and no clues. Dorabsha’s gold pocket watch and money were untouched, deliberately to confuse the police. The murderer then filed his candidature for Bombay North Lok Sabha seat, to ward off suspicion, and in the belief, that the police would not touch a parliamentary candidate from a minority community.
Nanavati’s crime of passion was celebrated in a Bollywood film (Yeh raaste hai, pyaar ke), several Gujarati plays and novels. ‘Ahuja towels’ and ‘Nanavati revolvers’ were sold by vendors at the Gateway of India. The power to pardon was taken away from state governors and is now exercised only by the President of India. Many rumors circulated that Ahuja was blackmailing Nanavati, as both were part of a smuggling racket and though the adultery did happen, it was used as a defence plea of grave provocation and ‘honor’ killing to escape the noose. Nanavati and Sylvia led a happy married life, ever after in Canada.
Daruwala was not so lucky. Despite his clever criminal mind and ability to destroy evidence, he made the unbelievable error of dumping the murder weapon (which he could have easily flung, along with a few stones, in the Arabian Sea) in the compound of Byramjee Jeejeebhoy High School. Some intrepid detective work led the police to confront him. His alibis came unstuck one after the other. For all his violent tendencies, Daruwala could not withstand even a few hard slaps, and before some serious police third degree could start, he sang like a canary and confessed (confession in custody is however inadmissible in evidence). All the stolen gold ornaments were traced. The State of Maharashtra’s case against Daruwala was open and shut. P. R. Vakil, who had been part of Nanavati’s defence team too, appeared for the prosecution, and another Parsi criminal lawyer, M. B. Mistry, for the accused. On the last day of the trial, this columnist attended court and remembers Daruwala’s bespectacled angular face, with those deadly protruding eyes, looking like a cornered hawk. The Sessions Judge convicted him and pronounced that Daruwala will hang from the neck until he dies. The Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court rejected his appeals, as did the President of India, his clemency plea to commute hanging to life imprisonment. Daruwala donated his kidney to a well known social worker, Hamid Dalwai, to gain sympathy, but to no avail. On a Thursday morning, Daruwala was hanged at the Yerawada jail in Poona, and his corpse handed over to his father.
The multiple stabbings notwithstanding, his mental fitness to undergo a trial was never argued. No tears were shed, no society ladies were upset, no community leaders intervened. No BPP or newspaper supported him. No political pardon was contemplated. Society shows no mercy to career criminals. Daruwala died, clutching his little daughter’s photo, in his hand. Nanavati must have read about Daruwala’s hanging over a cup of Earl Grey tea in distant Toronto.
When the Lok Sabha election results were declared, Daruwala’s election symbol, ironically, scales of justice, received 896 votes.
Berjis M. Desai, senior partner of J. Sagar Associates, advocates and solicitors, is a writer and community activist.